Course Webpage

As noted in the sidebar, this semester (Fall 2017) I am teaching Probability at Ursinus College using a textbook called "Introduction to Probability with Texas Hold'em Examples," by Dr. Frederic Paik Schoenberg at UCLA.

Here is my course webpage that I have made publicly available, if you are interested in seeing any of my material (activities, homework, quizzes, etc): Canvas page. Also, it's probably easiest to navigate if you then click "SHOW BY TYPE" (I've tried to get it to do this by default but no luck so far).

Also, here is the article I wrote about the course during its original inception, published in PokerNews.com: PokerNews article.

My blog posts this semester are focusing on my experience with using poker as a pedagogical platform for this course. For announcements when each new post goes up, follow me on Twitter @PeterBChi, and/or Subscribe by Email to receive e-mails when new posts go up.

I welcome comments on old posts, no matter how old. I'll do my best to respond even if it's been a while since I wrote the original post.

(Apparently there's no good way to "pin" a post in blogger, hence I dated this one as January 01, 2018 so that it'll stay at the top until then.)

The People Have Spoken

Ronnie Bardah Makes an Appearance

In Chapter 5 of our textbook, we discuss many of the common discrete random variables that you encounter in a probability course, such as Bernoulli, binomial, Poisson, etc.

In this vein, I thought that Exercise 5.12 at the end of the chapter was pretty neat:

A Reflection on my Thinking Poker Podcast Appearance

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A few weeks ago, I was invited to be a guest on the Thinking Poker Podcast to talk about my experience teaching probability using poker. The episode just went up, so check it out here: http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2017/10/episode-231-peter-chi/ or via any podcast app that you normally use, and just search for the show called Thinking Poker Podcast.

To any new readers who have found this blog via the podcast, welcome! To ongoing readers, thanks for finding your way back here this week. I invite you to check out the podcast episode if you haven't already. 

To everyone: this post will deviate a bit from my typical post. Usually this semester I've just been talking about teaching probability. But my mind is on something else right now, so here we go, and I hope to see you on the other side.

If you'd like to subscribe for email notifications when new posts go up in the future, click here or enter your email address in the sidebar. 

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Midterm Exam

I'm a bit late getting this week's post up because I've just been slammed.

I have been working on it for a while actually, but probably won't get it posted until tomorrow or possibly Friday. In the meantime, as a placeholder, here is the Midterm Exam that they just took. Enjoy!

What to do About Variance

Poker players tend to have a reasonable understanding of variance. We understand that if we put all our money in with the best hand at any point before the river, we still might not win. We also understand that it takes extremely large sample sizes to demonstrate anything meaningful about whether you are a winning player or not. Because variance.

As such, I initially thought that Variance would be one of the topics in my course that would be quite natural to teach with a poker framework in place. Unfortunately, it's been a bit of a challenge.

Poker Night, Podcasting, and the Professor Goes to Parx

Just a few quick hits for this post:

1) We had our 2nd poker night for the class last week. I also opened it up to our ASA Club, and my colleague (Professor Lisa Grossbauer, pictured below) advertised it to her classes as well.